Thursday, April 17, 2008

Saban's Fuzzy Math

Nick Saban was put on the hotseat Monday by Ian R. Rapoport of the Birmingham News over how the Alabama coach plans to get his roster down to the NCAA limit of 85 scholarship players.

By Rapoport's account, Saban will be six scholarships over the limit when an expected 25 freshmen enroll for fall classes. Given the public interest in Saban's math skills — he can certainly add up all those numbers on a contract that pays him $3.75 million this year — this was a fair question. And it no doubt is a question several Crimson Tide players and their families would like answered because it appears a few kids are about to lose their scholarships.

Pressed by Rapoport, Saban was at his combative best/worst — depending on your perspective — when trying to explain or not explain how this scholarship reduction would be accomplished.

It certainly appears that Saban is not looking out for the kids as much as he is looking out for himself, which has been the case throughout his career.

When dealing with the media, Saban remains nothing short of a jackass. Last week, he apparently raised a stink about a blog post by Gentry Estes of the Mobile Press-Register. Estes was merely informing his readers that reporters are not allowed to watch Alabama scrimmages or practices.

Then Ray Melick of the Birmingham News revealed that Saban had allowed a crew from FSN South to film an all-access look into the program. The coach also has been letting prep coaches and prospects into practices.

Wrote Melick: "And now we know what it takes to 'open' Saban's program: Show him where it benefits him, particularly in recruiting, which is the currency of most value in Saban's world."

As for Saban being a man of his word, forget about it. Who can forget last Nov. 17, when the coach suspended standout receiver DJ Hall for a game. That game, of course, was against Louisiana Monroe. And this was not a particularly good Louisiana Monroe team, making the timing of the suspension even more suspicious.

This is how Saban summed up back-to-back losses to Mississippi State and Louisiana Monroe: "Changes in history usually occur after some kind of catastrophic event. It may be 9/11, which sort of changed the spirit of America relative to a catastrophic event. Pearl Harbor got us ready for World War II or whatever, and that was a catastrophic event."

The last thing Crimson Tide fans needed was another reminder of the loss to Louisiana Monroe. But they got it, thanks to a billboard that was put up on Interstate 20, the route fans would take to watch the team play in the Independence Bowl.

15 comments:

Excellent post. It's been days since you were able to slam Saban for nothing again, so it's good that you spent 500 words linking to your own posts to try to prove how awful he is.

One suggestion, though... you might want to pick a title more befitting the content of the post. As opposed to "Saban's Fuzzy Math" for a post that's more about Ian Rapoport's fuzzy math, you might select "I Hate Saban Because He Coaches For Alabama and I'm a Huge Auburn Homer"... or something to that effect.

I love how these crimson tide fans all jump in to defend for poor little coach who gets upset over the media trying to do their job. There are apparently six young men who have dedicated themselves to Alabama football who are going to get screwed by CNS in the coming weeks and the bama fans apparently are not concerned about their feelings or those of the players' families.

It's really clear that Saban wouldn't being showing his big rear end to everyone on camera if he had a good answer. He and the university won't come out of this looking good and that's why he's upset. You'd think that real Tide fans would be concerned how badly their $4 million dollar coach is making their university - oops, their football team (most bama fans never have seen the inside of classroom on the tuscaloosa campus) look.

Maybe they won't jump to CNS' defense so quickly after he logs another 6-6 season or another loss to Auburn...

Saban nutswingers and Bama apologists are never far away. I'll bet money that when the time comes that Saban leaves Bama for greener pastures, all these people will suddenly realize what a jerk he is and say that they never really liked him.

What he meant to say was, don't worry, we have alumni who will pay for thos esix players that won't get a scholarship. So don't worry about those kids, ol uncle nick has it covered. He's loading up so he can score some points on Mississippi State this year, they haven't scored in 2 or 3 years.

If all you albarn fans would worry about albarn as much as you do Alabama you may have won a national championship in the last 70 years. Start lookin at ol' tubby's lack of NC before you down Saban for winning his!!